To say that these men paid their shillings to watch twenty-two hirelings kick a ball is merely to say that a violin is wood and catgut, that Hamlet is so much paper and ink. ~J.B. Priestley, The Good Companions, 1928

If this can be termed the century of the common man, then soccer, of all sports, is surely his game.... In a world haunted by the hydrogen and napalm bomb, the football field is a place where sanity and hope are still left unmolested. ~Stanley Rous, 1952

Five days shalt thou labour, as the Bible says. The seventh day is the Lord thy God's. The sixth day is for football. ~Anthony Burgess

Football is the opera of the people. ~Stafford Heginbotham, 1985

A sport where the players actually enjoy getting hit in the head by a ball. ~Soccer advertisement, published for the MetroStars Major League Soccer team, 1997

Concerning football playing, I protest to you it may rather be called a friendly kind of fighting, rather than recreation. ~Author Unknown

In Latin America the border between soccer and politics is vague. There is a long list of governments that have fallen or been overthrown after the defeat of the national team. ~Luis Suarez

If you're attacking, you don't get as tired as when you're chasing. ~Kyle Rote, Jr.

The English public doesn't really like Shakespeare; it prefers football. ~Herbert Beerbohm Tree, as quoted by Hesketh Pearson ("Sir Herbert Tree," Modern Men and Mummers)

I get a kick out of soccer. ~Author Unknown

Football is all very well as a game for rough girls, but is hardly suitable for delicate boys. ~Oscar Wilde

Soccer is not about justice. It's a drama - and criminally wrong decisions against you are part and parcel of that. ~Pete Davies

Other countries have their history. Uruguay has its football. ~Ondino Viera

To the aesthete it is an art form, an athletic ballet. To the spiritually inclined it is a religion. ~Paul Gardner

The rules of soccer are very simple, basically it is this: if it moves, kick it. If it doesn't move, kick it until it does. ~Phil Woosnam, 1974

The goal was scored a little bit by the hand of God, a little by the head of Maradona. ~Diego Maradona, 1986

The Glaswegian definition of an atheist: a bloke who goes to a Rangers-Celtic match to watch the football. ~Sandy Strang

The goalkeeper is the jewel in the crown and getting at him should be almost impossible. It's the biggest sin in football to make him do any work. ~George Graham, 1997

The rest of the world loves soccer. Surely we must be missing something. Uh, isn't that what the Russians told us about communism? There's a good reason why you don't care about soccer - it's because you are an American and hating soccer is more American than mom's apple pie, driving a pick-up and spending Saturday afternoon channel-surfing with the remote control. ~Tom Weir

All that proves is that most of the world is too poor to build bowling alleys, golf courses, tennis courts and baseball fields. There's hundreds of millions of poor people out there who still ain't got indoor plumbing, but that don't mean there's something great about an outhouse. Soccer is boring. I've never seen a more boring sport. ~Mike Royko, 1994

I think football would become an even better game if someone could invent a ball that kicks back. ~Eric Morecambe

Why is there only one ball for 22 players? If you gave a ball to each of them, they'd stop fighting for it. ~Author Unknown

Whenever the ball flew toward our goal and a score seemed inevitable, Jesus reached his foot out and cleared the ball. ~Author unknown, from an article in Rio de Janeiro's Jornal dos Sports

Up to five goals is journalism. After that, it becomes statistics. ~Author Unknown

I loathed the game, and since I could see no pleasure or usefulness in it, it was very difficult for me to show courage at it. Football, it seemed to me, is not really played for the pleasure of kicking a ball about, but is a species of fighting. ~George Orwell, Such, Such Were the Joys

Soccer is a game in which everyone does a lot of running around. Twenty-one guys stand around and one guy does a tap dance with the ball. ~Jim Murray, 1967

Some people say soccer's a matter of life or death, but it isn't. It's much more important than that. ~Variation of a famous saying